Editing Josephus on Jesus (section)

== The three passages in relation to ''The Jewish Wars'' ==
[[File:Gar. 15 f.3r.jpeg|thumb|upright=0.7|left|A fifteenth-century copy of ''[[The Jewish War]]'' in Italian]]
[[Louis Feldman]] states that it is significant that the passages on James and John are found in the ''Antiquities'' and not in the ''Jewish Wars'', but provides three explanations for their absence from the ''Jewish Wars''. One explanation is that the ''Antiquities'' covers the time period involved at a greater length than the ''Jewish Wars''. The second explanation is that during the gap between the writing of the ''Jewish Wars'' ({{circa|AD&nbsp;70}}) and ''Antiquities'' (after AD&nbsp;90) Christians had become more important in Rome and were hence given attention in the ''Antiquities''. Another explanation is that the passages were added to the ''Antiquities'' to highlight the power of the [[Pharisees]], but he considers the last explanation less likely than the others.{{sfn|Feldman|1984|p=826}}

One of the arguments against the authenticity of the James passage has been that in the ''Jewish Wars'' Josephus portrays the High Priest [[Ananus ben Ananus|Ananus]] in a positive manner, while in the ''Antiquities'' he writes of Ananus in a negative tone.{{sfn|Feldman|Hata|1987|p=56}} Louis Feldman rejects these arguments against the authenticity of the James passage and states that in several other unrelated cases the ''Jewish Wars'' also differs from the ''Antiquities'', and that an interpolator would have made the two accounts correspond more closely to each other, not make them differ.{{sfn|Feldman|Hata|1987|p=56}}

The twenty-year gap between the writing of the ''Jewish Wars'' and the ''Antiquities'' has also been used to explain some of the differences in tone between them.<ref name=Thoma /> [[Clemens Thoma]] provides an explanation for this based on the observation that Josephus may have learned of the details of the actions of Ananus in the twenty-year gap between the writing of the Jewish Wars and the Antiquities, and thus avoided a positive tone when writing of Ananus in the ''Antiquities''.<ref name=Thoma>"The High Priesthood in the Judgement of Josephus" by Clemens Thoma, in ''Josephus, the Bible and History'' by Louis Feldman and Gohei Hata 1977 {{ISBN|90-04-08931-4}} pp. 212–213</ref>

[[John Painter (theologian)|John Painter]] also states that the difference in the context for the ''Jewish Wars'' and the ''Antiquities'' may account for some of the differences in tone between them. When writing of Ananus in a positive tone in the ''Jewish Wars'', the context was Ananus' prudence in avoiding a war and hence Josephus considered that a positive aspect.{{sfn|Painter|2005|p=157}} However, when writing in the ''Antiquities'' about the actions of Ananus which resulted in his demotion from the High Priesthood, the context required the manifestation of a negative aspect of Ananus' character.{{sfn|Painter|2005|p=157}}